People Who Are Bafflingly Popular

Shakespeare once said " Celebrity is never more admired than by the negligent", which is a statement that rings as true today as it ever has done. As we've covered on more than one occasion here at Muppets For Justice, celebrity culture is a soulless and often disgusting media circus in which a new set of barely recognisable cardboard cutouts are rolled out every two years to populate our TV shows and magazine covers. But that doesn't mean we can't have a bit of fun at their expense, right?

As time goes on it becomes harder to tell if some people are in the public eye because people around them are deluded enough to think there is something to them, or if they promote them out of some kitch irony. Anyway, let's take a sneaky peek at some of the more vapid wombshits that have graced the turgid rim of our entertainment industry. Why these people are revered and celebrated I have no idea.

10. Fearne Cotton

Fearne Cotton has managed to get into more places than Hugh Hefner's cock. How she finds the time to present everything on ITV2, have a daily radio show on Radio 1, do every telethon that comes her way, jet off to spend weekends with a different hollow camerawhore every week, and still find time to tattoo another "unique" fairy, or a rose, or a fairy covered in roses on her leg is a complete mystery. Technically, Fearne Cotton is busiest person on Earth; even more so than our respective leaders who carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. What is even more of mystery is why people seem to think she's worthy of all this.

Being a Spack Of All Trades, Master Of Nothing, you'd have thought that her career would have been over long before she graduated from showing children how to do potato prints on daytime TV, but she's the gift horse that keeps on blathering. Watching her interview someone is like trying to hold a conversation with a teenage girl after buying her a new iPhone and inviting the entire cast of Twilight to stand around in the background. She couldn't even focus on a High Definition picture of a pair of contact lenses. Her interview technique basically consists of repeating what the interviewee has already said, and asking stock questions such as "How do you feel about that?". If she interviewed a holocaust survivor, she'd probably still ask that same blindingly obvious question, leaving you as having gleaned absolutely nothing from what could have been an enlightening experience.

9. Danny Dyer

It's not that Danny Dyer is an awful man; he just strikes me as a bit of a smug cunt. Whether you feel that he deserves his success or not, he doesn't exactly hide it modestly as he swans around like Guy Ritchie's kid brother. The man looks like Daniel Beddingfield engaged in illicit liasons with a Dolmio Puppet. Apparently, this felt-lined baboon of modern excess is something of a pin up amongst some women, even though he looks like the spoilt, chubby child of a sweetshop owner after falling into a teleporter with a member of the cast of Hollyoaks. Also, everything I've ever heard him say has been insipid, misogynistic, or downright idiotic.

8. Kate Moss

Drugs are usually a common leveller when it comes to mass media hype. In the bleary eyes of the standard tabloid-gobbler, drugs are mostly a fast track to hatesville, but Kate Moss managed to ride that slippery, greased-up bucking bronco all the way to the bank. No sooner had the story emerged that she had been snorting cocaine (which, up until the story broke, I assumed was as normal as having a bowl of cornflakes for the likes of Kate Moss. It came as quite a surprise to me that everyone else found her drug abuse to be surprising), she had already checked into rehab, had fully recovered, received several more products to endorse, and been visited by God himself who furiously masturbated himself into an angry climax at her bewildering recovery.

Why you'd want someone such as Kate Moss to advertise your goods is beyond me. Genetically, Kate Moss has more in common with a clothes horse than you or I.

7. Philip Schofield

We've had a pop at Schofield before, but he really is the most evil man that has ever existed. He is a cauldron containing all the evils of the world, bubbling away whilst the devil himself perches himself over the rim and curls off a cheeky poo, allowing Lee Harvey Oswald and Harold Shipman to stir the rigid stool into the mixture whilst cackling to the tune of Ride Of The Valkyries. The fact that he has chosen the fuzzy, inoffensive This Morning as his fortress of deception is the most heinous of his crimes. There's something so hideously unbearable about his cheery optimism, his satsuma themed flesh, and hair that is so prematurely grey that it looks like papier mache stuck onto a broom handle. As a host for the show, he is required to feign interest in real life stories, but deep down you know he's plotting to brutally slay The Clangers and feed them to The Wombles, or something equally as diabolical.

6. Coleen Rooney

Coleen is famous for doing a bit of shopping and being so detestable that even her ork-trapped-in a-car-crusher of a husband cheated on her with a prostitute. From these essential points on her CV, she's extrapolated an entire career which includes a show called "Coleen's Real Women" where Coleen teaches young women how to deal with fame. The show basically consists of a bunch of nobodies stood around listening to Coleen reciting less than stellar anecdotes about being blinded by cameras and being nervous when walking down a red carpet. Then they try on some shoes and call it a rap. Television gold!

5. David Gest

The man is either so dull that he is essentially a black hole, sucking up and regurgitating any celebrity stories he can find like a vacuum cleaner nozzle poked down a drainpipe, or he is the most brilliant walking piece of satirical celebrity culture ever to have been created. I'm ultimately undecided, but I'm leaning towards the former considering I've never heard him say anything of interest.

4. John Barrowman

Despite making the ovaries of many middle aged women clang together whenever he waltzes onto screen, John Barrowman is a hideous example of modern celebrity. He sums up everything I despise about the world of "variety" and looks like David Cameron after absorbing the entirety of Tom Cruise through his anus. Even though he'd have been a reject on The Generation Game, Barrowman has managed to force himself into mainstream television presenting.

The strangest element of the Barrowman Boogeyman is the way in which he sprang to stardom in the first place. I used to meander around not knowing who John Barrowman was, and life was much simpler back then. Then I woke up one day and there he was grinning at me from a television screen whilst the whites of his teeth burned small holes through the wall behind me. The worst part was that everyone else seemed to have heard of him, as if I had somehow gone to bed, slipped into a coma for several years, and woke up in the future where everyone had watched Barrowman grow up from being a cheeky child scamp in a west end musical to the multinational broadcasting force that we see before us today. It's like when you go on holiday for a fortnight and all the news you've missed whilst you've been away, no matter how inconsequential, always seems drastically life changing, and home never seems quite the same again. That's the nausea that Barrowman creates. He's the human equivalent of jet lag.

3. Jack Tweed

Jack is from the same fame school as Coleen Rooney, only he's much worse. The man literally has no personality. I've dug lint out of my pockets with more charm and charisma, and probably had a deeper, longer, more meaningful relationship with that lint than Jack Tweed has ever managed in his life. He may have married the celebrity pork scratching known as Jade Goody, but I doubt that Jack was even present in the relationship, and the marriage was probably consummated by a cardboard box with his face glued to it.

Jack has staggeringly achieved everything possible to make himself as detestable as any human can be without resorting to mass murder or paedophilia. He assaults cab drivers whilst his dying wife is at home, he has been remanded on charges of rape, he's constantly on a tag, has allegations of drug abuse, and he is also incapable of saying or doing anything when a camera is pointed at him. He freezes to the spot as though he's some sort of terrible spirit that can only move when no one is watching, only I doubt there's an evil agenda at work in his head. In fact, I doubt that anything is at work in his head. He's just a synaptic shell roaming the lands as an unprogrammed android who's mission it is to distract attention away from anything remotely interesting.

2. Piers Morgan

Do I really have to spell out how awful a man who fakes prisoner abuse photographs is? If so, just watch an episode of Britain's Got Talent and witness how a man can be both sycophantic and condescending in equal measure. The whole show is an elaborate ploy to try and gain favour with a public who was largely unaware of him during his heyday of shittery. This was back in the days when he used a national newspaper to besmirch the names of anyone wittier, more talented, or generally more likeable than he was. His hate campaigns were legendary, but nothing could save him once he decided to engineer a bunch of doctored photographs that allegedly showed Iraqis being abused by soldiers. All so he could sell a few newspapers. I can't think of anyone worse than that. Oh wait, here's one...

1. Cheryl Cole

I suppose the best thing you can say about Cheryl is that by contracting Malaria, she managed to stop someone else from contracting it, if you believe in karma. If you don't believe in karma however, she has no redeeming qualities.

Top Of The Noughties 3: Ways To Make The Nation Angry

The Noughties have seen extreme changes in the way the public airs it's views. In a culture where power belongs to the people when it comes to the most asinine aspects of life, it's understandable that people would get frustrated with topics and occurrences that they cannot conveniently "vote off" or press a red button when they disagree with it or don't like it, as though life is just one big reality show. People demand their voices to be heard over the most insignificant things from Jedward to win the X Factor, bringing troops home, all the way to writing a Blog. People have become very vocal when they are angry, and become very angry much quicker. Here are the main things that have had the British public foaming like a boxer dog chewing its way through a box of Daz.

10. Blow Up/Crash Into A Landmark

Surprisingly low down on our list, blowing up landmarks isn't the height of evil that it once was. We were all shocked by September the 11th and the atrocities that happened there, yet many have already forgotten our very own tube bombings, or the countless car bombs exploded in London during the IRA years. Although it was hot news for about a week, it quickly blew over faster than one of the carriages involved.

9. Take The Mickey Out Of Paedophiles

You'd have thought that this was a way to make the nation like you, but apparently it's disgraceful to have a joke when the subject of paedophilia is near, and that's why the media went snooker loopy after Chris Morris made a satirical news programme about it. Well, his show was more of a piss take out of the way the media makes a mountain out of the subject, so there's no wonder the papers branded him as "sick". He also made Dr Fox look like an idiot! How dare he!?

8. Go Into Politics

Is there a politician out there that isn't widely hated? Reading out the names of a political party conference guest list is like reading out the names of the world's most prolific murderers to some folks. Everyone always thinks that they could do a better job, but I don't. I'm quite content to just slag off the people who are in charge and not offer my own breakdown of how to sort out the economy and everything else.

7. Give Some Money To A Banker

Banker's bonuses? Every time a newspaper gets a whiff of a banker getting some money, a whole new can of worms is opened. I just hope that their families don't give them any money for Christmas or, god forbid, a gift voucher!

6. Be Politically Correct

Why can't I call this woman a man when she's doing her job? Why can't I say "blackboard" at school? Why can't I stare at boobs at work? It's political correctness gone mad, I tells ya!

In actual fact, you can still decorate your house in St George's flags and walk around singing "Baa Baa Black Sheep". You've been misinformed. Now think about it before you waltz off down to the tattoo parlour and get an obnoxious portrait of a bulldog fighting a dragon whilst drinking lager as a show of your patriotism. What are you really trying to prove, other than you have no taste whatsoever? You're fighting against nothing.

5. Join The Army And Get Killed Doing Your Job

Hoo boy, we're really touching some political sore spots on this list, aren't we? Alright, it's terrible that someone has been shot, but 200+ deaths in 8 years of warfare in Afghanistan is a really insignificant figure. I'd bet more British people have been killed by their toasters than have died serving their country in Afghanistan. I don't mean to sound insensitive and I genuinely feel sorry for the families who have lost someone, but those soldiers have voluntarily chosen a career where they are going to get shot at. Does a lion tamer complain when he gets his head bitten off whilst putting it in a lion's mouth? Well, he probably would if he still had a head, but my point is still valid.

On another note, the media seems completely unable to make up it's mind about the conflict in the Middle East. One minute they're harping on about it being a pointless war and that we shouldn't be there, the next they are complaining that our forces don't have enough helicopters. What do you want? A complete troop withdrawal, but for us to send over a bunch of helicopters and give the keys to the insurgents?

4. Declare A Pandemic

Swine flu. Bird flu. Foot and mouth. Mad cow disease. All of these can and will infect your children if you breathe near the meat counter in a supermarket. Enjoy your domestic farm animal related illness.

3. Fiddle Your Expenses

"Taxpayer's money" is a phrase created by reactionaries who just love the sound of their own voice, but for once, they kind of had a point. MPs were claiming expenses on the most stupid things like moats and islands for ducks, and only when they got caught did they show any remorse. As a result, the public were actually successful in getting people fired.

2. Call An Indian Woman "Papadum"

Racism? On telly? It was funny during the 70's, but now I'm steaming mad because of a throwaway comment by an idiot!

This wasn't the first or last time that Jade Goody would be the centre of attention during the Noughties, but it was her least spectacular moment. Her romance with celebrity culture was always flirting with danger since she was such an oblivious, dumb, overgrown baby, so it was never going to end well. But who'd have thought that the same people who put her on pedestal through her endearing stupidity would crucify her for the exact same thing.

1. Insult A Grandpa

Or more to the point, tell a grandpa that his granddaughter is a bit loose. Radio presenters have made this mistake in the past and have lost their jobs or been suspended. It's disgusting I tells ya!

Top Of The Noughties 2: Shit Covers

The Noughties have been a strange decade when it comes to music. Overall, we've been pretty unsure as to what the defining genre of our generation should be. The 60's had their Pop music, 70's had Disco, the 90's had Grunge and Britpop respectively. However, ten-yearly cycles of music seem to be out of fashion as we seem to have a new craze every two to three years right now. Regardless, a confused generation is always going to look backwards at what has been, thus the one musical constant we've had has been the cover version. Mostly shit cover versions at that. Here are the worst offenders.

10. The Kooks - All That She Wants

Jo Whiley's adopted children, The Kooks, were Radio 1 darlings for a short while with their summery tunes and straw hats despite sounding like The Thrills rip offs without any production whatsoever. They recorded a version of the early 90's Ace Of Base song All That She Wants by successfully ripping the soul out of the record like Sub Zero removing an opponent's spinal column. Luke Pritchard's dislikeable drawl added nothing to this awful rendition, and my guess is that he was trying to capitalise off of the nostalgia such a song would usually create. It turned out to be just another excuse as to why you should ignore The Kooks.

9. Snow Patrol - Crazy In Love

Another cover that originated in the Radio 1 Live Lounge. This song had a tough wrestle with Arctic Monkey's version of Love Machine (a bad cover of a bad cover) for this spot on the list, but Snow Patrol's effort wins out because they had the woeful idea of incorporating this into their live shows. Gary Lightbody (Buzz's cousin) breathlessly grunts "oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh ohh" as if trying to imitate Beyonce's jiggling hips through the medium of vocal warbling. It's a cover version that literally adds nothing to what was already an annoying song, complete with someone trying imitate Jay Z's rap but without the charisma.

8. Kanye West - Gold Digger

Now, this isn't necessarily a cover version, but it is infuriating enough to earn a spot on this countdown. Kanye West might be the most egotistical man in show business (as evidenced by the way he gets up on stage at every awards show to steal the limelight from the actual winners), but his worst aspects are the samples he uses from other more successful songs. This one is a sample taken from a Ray Charles record (I Got A Woman), but with Jamie Foxx on hand, they successfully change the lyrics and invert the meaning! Rather than the line "She gives me money", Kanye changes it to "She takes my money"! This is deep, cerebral stuff right here folks.

7. The Vines - Miss Jackson

Duller than reading Cliff Richard's autobiography on an overcast day. The Vines made their name through their enigmatic style, but none of that is in evidence here. We are instead forced to listen to monotone vocals and dreary strumming with less energy than an M.E. sufferer with some heavy shopping. Also, no cool raps. Poor show!

6. Westlife - Mandy

Alright, as far as Westlife go this is standard for the course, but the song was so overexposed that if it were a photograph it'd just be a 4 x 6 lens flare with red eyes peering out of the solar flare. I hate this song at the best of times, so when five blonde Louis Walsh fantasies all start belting it out, it's a recipe for shit pudding in my books.

5. Mark Ronson and Lily Allen - Oh My God

Hahaha, it's just like the Kaiser Chiefs with trumpets! Lily Allen is dreary at the best of times with her soothingly boring vocal stylings, but this is absolute bollocks. You can effectively recreate this recording at home by having a good old yawn.

4. Robbie Williams - Video Killed The Radio Star

A more apt name for this would be Crack Cocaine Killed The Pop Singer's Voice. Robbie debuted this addition to his repertoire at a lackluster Electric Proms performance and managed to make it sound worse than all of his other material, which was a miraculous feat in itself. Mr Williams sounded like he's had an aversion to Strepsils, which is probably the only drug he hasn't been addicted to. Frankly, I'd rather he was still running around telling folks about his alien abduction than straining out this dross. Oh, and stop showing off that Take That tattoo now that they are popular without you, you attention seeking chimp.

3. Joss Stone - Fell In Love With A Boy

Joss takes a fantastic White Stripes powerhouse and turns it into an infuriating mess of "soulful" singing. Joss hums along with the track as if she's trying to eat her dinner at the same time and manages to create a watered down soul record. I also blame Joss Stone for the rise of Duffy, so this horrendous song shoots straight to number 3 in our chart.

2. Kanye West - Stronger

Kanye West has done it again, only this time it's Daft Punk he's tinkering with. The song itself is almost redeemed by the inclusion of Harder Better Faster Stronger, but the bafflingly bizarre mixture of that song and Kanye's incessant rapping about nothing in particular make this an absolute stinker. It would be hypocritical to pull Kanye up on sampling Daft Punk as they themselves craft tunes entirely out of other samples, but they do it with such finesse and subtlety that it makes Kanye's effort appear as though it was cobbled together in Audacity by a deaf kid.

1. Leona Lewis - Run

This overproduced piece of plastic poop is possibly the worst song in existence. Just thinking about this song has killed several hundred thousand brain cells.

Top Of The Noughties 1: Annoying Noughtisms

Cast your mind back 10 years, if you will. The year was 1999. People were preparing to party like it was the year in question, the Millennium Dome looked like a fantastic idea, and Gail Porter's arse spread it's way across our famous landmarks. On the whole, the public were feeling rather optimistic about the new millennium and what the far out, futuristic Noughties had to offers us. Many people seemed to have the impression that we'd all be zipping around like in The Jetsons by the stroke of midnight, and as such were left sorely disappointed.

So what has the Noughties decade achieved? Well, the world has changed rather a lot since those days. In some ways better, in some ways worse. As the first tenth of the new century, and the first hundredth of the new millennium draws to a close (oh yes, I can do maths!), we at Muppets For Justice would like to take you on a nostalgic trek through the peaks and troughs of the decade in a new feature we like to call Top Of The Noughties. Top Of The Noughties will feature the best and worst of the last ten years in celebration that as a race, we've not killed ourselves yet in a ridiculous manner. In the first of these articles (this one right here in case you were looking for it), we'll explore a term I've coined called Noughtisms. Noughtisms are words which have been popularised or come into existence since the year 2000, so let's take a cursory glance at the most craptacular of these so called, new fangled Noughtisms.

10. PMSL

You might be foriven that PMSL is a term which describes an irregularity with the female reproductive system, but it's actually an acronym for "Pissing My Self Laughing".

Seriously? Are you really urinating in your trousers due to some words on a screen? I'm pleased to have forced you to void your bladder over my sentences, it's a high compliment and more prestigious an award than recieving the Nobel Prize. On another note, you don't have to be the Poet Laureate to notice that "My Self" should be "Myself", making the acronym PML. "Haha" is much easier to type so I'd stick with that if I were you.

9. Booty/Batty

The Americans had Booty, whilst we in the UK had Batty. Both terms are used to describe buttocks, the sheer prevailance of the words meant hours of tedium as failing pseudorappers used it as every other word in their material (the other phrases being either "Slap dat" or "Lookit" when referring to Booty).

8. Butterface/BOBFOC

"Mate, she's a butterface! Everything looks great But Her Face!"
"Yeah mate, she's a BOBFOC! Body Off Baywatch, Face Off Crimewatch!"

Alright, this type of discourse has an iota of wit associated with it, but that's like saying Katie Price is a best selling author. It wouldn't be so bad if these awfully sexist slogans of shittery weren't repeated by blokes as if they were the ones who originally thought them up. They have been around for years, but Cool Britannia picked them up and put them on rickety pub bar stools rather than pedestals, then poured a yard of ale over them whilst singing Build Me Up Buttercup before taking a relaxing piss in an alleyway directly onto a homeless person.

7. War On Terror

Not much new with any of these words individually, but put them together and you suddenly have one of the most idiotic notions to have come to fruition since someone tried to eliminate walking with an expensive motorised scooter. War by it's very nature is terrifying, to trying to fight terror with even more terror is only compounding the problem. It's like trying to stop a leak by hosing it down with cold water.

6. Content

Content is been around ever since there have been vessels to contain content, but the Noughties elevated content to an impressive buzz word to describe...well, anything! Everything is propped up by content from games consoles, mobile phones, websites, gadgets etc. and it is mostly used to describe new material that probably should have been included from the beginning, but that you have to pay for. With video games you have to make "Micropayments" to purchase "content" and even "episodic content", meaning that most games you get are only half the package and your extras come to you over the Internet at a cost. In the case of iPhones, the content is the apps. Social Networking is another buzz word and is supported by the pillars of content, only this time it's used as a selling feature for advertisers and requires it's users to create all of the content. Sites such as Facebook and MySpace are full of user generated content, usually pertaining to what people you know have had for tea. Important stuff!

5. Social Networking

Social Networking is such an annoying term to describe a website where friends talk about crap that no one else would care about. "LOL MA BABY JUST DONE A HUGE BURP LOOOOL!". Social Networking at it's finest my friends. The most annoying thing about it is that there's no less fancy way of referring to these websites, so you are forced to call them Social Networking sites anyway.

4. Shawty

The least complimentary way to refer to your girlfriend I can possibly conjure up. Seriously, Shawty? I think Bitchslut Dishcleaner would be a more enlightened way to refer to a woman who you care about. Where does this term even come from? How was it created? It just makes your wife/girlfriend sound like midget.

3. Boo

In the same vein as Shawty, Boo can apply to both genders and my guess is that it is supposed to be a cutesy pet name or something. However, the kind of pet names like Snugglebunch or Honeycakes that those sickly sweet couples would like to use are much too long, so instead we have opted for a phrase only uttered by cartoon ghosts. Complimentary indeed!

2. WAG

A term to describe the Wives And Girlfriends of footballers. Even though the connection between these women and the wagging of dog's tails is one that I could fully get behind, the term is almost an idealistic, glamorous status to achieve for many of today's young women, even more so than becoming a Dame. The fact that the partners of footballers are considered newsworthy enough for someone to create a term for them is awful enough, but when WAGs are rapidly becoming the ladies of society these days, it's enough to make you want to travel back to the 90's. If we all put on our Parkas, let our eyebrows join up, fill our pockets with POGs and rewatch episodes of The Fresh Prince and The X Files until a wormhole is created with the overwhelming 90's-ness, we might actually achieve it.

1. Credit Crunch

Oh the Credit Crunch is here? Good job we have a few bob put aside for a rainy day huh? OH SHIT NO! IT'S NOT A CREDIT CRUNCH IS A FUCKING RECESSION AND IT'S GOING TO EAT ALL OF OUR JOBS AND RAPE OUR BANKS!

The term Credit Crunch was a nice way of basically saying that we were all going to lose our jobs. This sugar coated truth was all well and good until the reality of it really bit down and suddenly, hey, a future of slight thrift doesn't look so good anymore. I'd have preferred the Credit Crunch if it'd have stayed that way and not invited it's big brother Recession along for the ride.